When composing a new entry, it will now autosave the entry as a draft for you !! It is dependant on the browser that you're using though and whether you have javascript enabled.

If anyone here is using Opera, the above feature will no longer work in the just released Opera 8.01 (Opera 8.00 works correctly though) - all you'll get is a message "save failed".As far as I can determine there's pretty much nothing we can do about this, although that might just be the very late hour in this part of the world speaking. *g* Have prodded the Opera developers though - who knows. Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious.

The blog functionality is excellent. Is this blog engine once of the well known ones like Mobanle Type? If it is we could use the hundrensds of templates already floating aroudn the web.

As far as comments go I think it is mistake to force comments to come from members. It seems redundant that friends and family of a member need to join even if they are not travelling themselves, and for this reason I think they won't. An option I guess would be for the blogger to create a dummy member which he provides the username and password to his friends and family just so they can leave comments.

A better way would be allow the blogger to set a password on comments in the same manner that the diary system works. Alternatively the ability to add certain email addresses that can comment. That way non-members can enter their email address and if it is in the bloggers list they can add a comment.

I realise spam is an issue but i hope you will look into making it easier for certain non-members to comment.

The blogs aren't movable type, they're coded from scratch by Peter and Sander. Heck of a job too I don't think the templates would be too far off though. We opted for comments in this format for spam reasons as you probably guessed, although I do admit, it's not the perfect solution. I like your idea of adding email addresses to a list and only letting those comment. Could be a good way around it and keep spam to a minimum....

The blogs aren't movable type, they're coded from scratch by Peter and Sander. Heck of a job too I don't think the templates would be too far off though. We opted for comments in this format for spam reasons as you probably guessed, although I do admit, it's not the perfect solution. I like your idea of adding email addresses to a list and only letting those comment. Could be a good way around it and keep spam to a minimum....

Pete, what do you think re. feasability?

Cheers,

Sam

I would think the easier option would be to make it optional for blog owners to allow comments from un-logged-in users. A list of email addresses would be a good solution, but at the same time means it would be really quite easy to pretend you're someone else ... all you have to guess is an email address. And would we show that email address, or rely on users to type in their name? My feeling is you would get a lot of 'anonymous' comments, which would be quite confusing. Personally, I think having to be a member is a minor step and I wouldn't want random people commenting on my blog anyway. But I'm happy to consider alternatives.

From what I saw on other blog sites, bloggers have the option of allowing anonymous comments. This way, the bloggers will decide whether or not to allow anonymous comments. They must be ready for nasty comments if they chose to allow that, which should not be a problem as comments can be deleted or edited. And these comments should have their IPs tracked (if it's not currently so).

It would also be quite cool to be able to define your own custom links on the side panel. Most obviously I would like a quicklink to my photo gallery so users didn't have to click on the author name/ then travellerspoint profile, then finally photo gallery. But other links would also be cool such as my favourite travel info sites, links to other blogs etc.

I am also confused in my profile whether the photo gallery link leads to my gallery or all galleries?The reason is that some of my photos are not in my gallery however the photos shown on my profile include those not in the gallery. If the random photo shown is in my gallery I get a link to the gallery. If the random photo is not in my gallery I can't access my gallery. I think this is a bug. It should only show your gallery photos on your profile page. You can see this yourself if you go to my profilehttp://www.travellerspoint.com/member_profile.cfm?user=sydpam

Sometimes you get the cowboy picture which is OK. Other times you get my blog template pictures which screw things up.